“My husband put it in a strainer, rinsed it in a colander, and then put some onions and dressing on it and then tossed it in a large bowl, and then from there proceeded to serve it into our individual plates,” Garfinkel told The Dodo.

Garfinkel, her husband and her son were seated around the kitchen table eating when Garfinkel, about halfway through eating, went to stab another bite. “I screamed,” Garfinkel said. “I jumped up, knocked my chair over and was like, ‘Oh my God, there’s a frog in my salad.’”

“My husband said that it looked like just a little tree frog,” Garfinkel said. But that moment of relief was just that — a moment. Garfinkel’s husband noticed that the frog didn’t seem well. “He’s under the sink rinsing him off because there was a vinaigrette on the salad … We’re both such animal lovers, and my husband was like, ‘I think it’s dying.’”

But the family had recently seen the video where someone gave very gentle chest compressions to a lizard who had been drowning. “It’s the size of a dime — he uses his finger very gently to push on his chest and the frog starts breathing again,” Garfinkel said. “It went from that horror to, ‘Oh my God, he’s so cute.’”

Garfinkel contacted her local store about the incident and sent a message to Target on Facebook, but she has yet to hear about whether they’re investigating what happened. “It’s a little concerning,” she said. "It’s a live animal.”

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Becky Garfinkel

The family happened to have a large aquarium they were planning to get rid of — but now it’s become the little guy’s home, outfitted with a little tree and tiny pond.

“He has made it through so much, my worst fear is him getting out and getting eaten by a bird,” Garfinkel said. She had looked into where the salad came from. It was from a wetter part of California, not the drier climate where her family lives. “We’re having a heatwave right now. If I put him out, he’d die.”